Sig Christenson: From convict to patriot

While in Afghanistan, I received an e-mail sent from an angry reader. He wanted to know why an Afghan businessman I had interviewed wasn’t defending his country in the new army that the United States was training at a large camp on the outskirts of Kabul.

I told our paper’s ombudsman, Bob Richter, who had forwarded the message to me, that you could ask the very same question of Americans all across the country. They’ve stayed away from Army recruiting offices in droves since the previous president launched two wars.

Why? Maybe they weren’t so patriotic. Or maybe they had other priorities.

Enter Nasser Hempel, convicted felon. An 11-year veteran of the Texas prison system, he came to an Army recruiting station in Houston in 2006 with nothing to lose &mdash sort of like those guys in the movie “The Dirty Dozen.” Though it seemed a longshot that he could actually join the Army and serve his country after doing that kind of time for a violent crime, armed robbery, Hempel really wanted it. And he knew many others did not.

The Army also had a way to help him, thanks to its waiver program.

“I know some people cringe at the fact that the Army lets convicted felons into their ranks, but the program was incorporated because a lot of Americans with perfect backgrounds were not willing to make the sacrifice,” he said.

The program provides waivers for everything from misdemeanor drug crimes and joyriding to violent felonies. Kids failing the drug test given new inductees also can get a waiver, as can a precious few who do poorly on the Pentagon aptitude test.

The waiver program has been tightened since the recession made it easier for the Army to sign up young boots, but you can bet things will change when the economy recovers and people aren’t desperate for work. That’s a certainty, given the history of the 36-year-old volunteer force.

Hempel got in after passing muster with a top Recruiting Command officer who interviewed him. He was one of just over 1,000 felons that year who entered service under the waiver program.

Not everybody likes the idea of putting society’s rejects into the Army. One Gulf War veteran I know said it was the Army Recruiting Command’s way of fixing a short-term problem &mdash making its annual quota &mdash at the expense of the permanent force, which then has to live with the trouble caused by some of those soldiers.

That’s a fair criticism. The Recruiting Command conceded that some of recruits coming in on moral waivers were in trouble more often. There’s more about how they have performed in the story if you haven’t read it or have forgotten the facts.

But Hempel is one of the Army’s true success stories. He’s now in Iraq, awaiting promotion from corporal to sergeant. There are sweet ironies in this new life. After bunking with some of the worst, he lives and works with the best. His roommate is a cop.

So, too, is his first sergeant.

In the Army Reserve, Hempel looks back at the day he first entered that recruiting station with a sense of pride you may not see from others coming in to enlist.

“As soon as I walked into the office, I felt a sense of pride, accomplishment and achievement. The same feeling every young kid fresh out of high school feels when he walks through that door, but here I was, 33 years old,” he recalled.

For him, it was like prom night.

One of my good friends shared Hempel’s sense of pride, and that of a nation that takes risks in the name of compassion as much as utility, saying, “I like the fact that the military gives people a second chance once their ‘dues to society’ are paid.”

But that isn’t the end of this happy news story. Cpl. Nasser Hempel is mapping plans to redeploy to Afghanistan as soon as possible, and it isn’t because he loves being in combat &mdash though like so many of our troops he is quite willing to fight for our country.

Just why this married father of three is so eager to do back-to-back tours of the war zone is the final blog, and it will humble you.